Memorial Day Weekend

Here's the update I promised. And...well, there's actually stuff to update. 

Like I said, it was super busy. There were tons of people coming into town. I spent the whole weekend (after I helped out my parents) wandering around town, looking for anything weird. Well, weirder than normal. I've lived in this town for over a decade but I've never felt unsafe here...at least not until this weekend.

I spent most of my wandering time around the restaurants. There's like...two or three places you can get food in this tiny little town: the pizza place, the ice cream place (both owned by the Starling family, who also owns one of the ranches), and a steakhouse (this one is run by the Rainer family. They are...extra weird). I got some weird looks from the waitress at the pizza place, one of the daughters, I think her name is Juliana or something like that. Another of the Starling kids was manning the ice cream place, Payton. I've met her before and she's kind of nice. I tend to avoid that family altogether though. My parents don't really like them.

It was actually Payton who made me aware of what led to the big thing I have to share with you guys. It was...kind of weird actually. She made really intense eye contact with me, and then she looked at this other person in the store, a young woman who was chattering with some of her friends. A nondescript, typical tourist. Then she made eye contact with me again. I gave her a weird look and didn't really think about it until later.

After lunch, I ended up following the woman and her friends up the highway towards the forest, since it's on my way home. I thought about the way Payton had looked at the woman and it nagged at me. On impulse, I decided to follow them. 

...It's hard to explain what happened next. I'm still not quite sure, to be honest. I basically stalked them as they picked out a trail and started walking. Which, yeah, not nice of me but I'm supposed to be investigating here. Anyways, the deeper we got into the woods, the more on edge I started to feel. Something felt...wrong. The Hartwood Forest has always been super creepy but it was extra creepy this time. I got the horrible feeling that we were being watched.

Things start to get blurry after that. I remember the woman I was following stopped in the middle of the trail at one point, staring off at something in the trees away from the trail. Her friends were confused, but she must have said something to soothe their concerns because she walked straight off the trail and they didn't follow her.

I did though. I'm honestly not sure what happened after this. I was following her and I began to hear...I think it was voices. Maybe it was whispering, I'm not sure. Things began to get really fuzzy, and no matter what I did, I couldn't clear my head. That feeling of wrongness got stronger, and it started to feel almost like my insides were trying to become my outsides. It was that uncomfortable. 

I thought I heard a scream at some point, and I remember some sort of dark shape, but the next clear memory I have I was standing in front of a boulder in the forest. The woman I had followed was nowhere to be found. It took me a second to figure out where I was, but once I did, I noticed one last thing.

There was part of a deer skull sitting on the boulder. It was too weird and deliberate-looking to just have been there like that naturally. For some reason, the sight sent a shiver down my spine. I tried to take a picture of it, but the photo didn't turn out right. I've taken pictures near this place before and they've never turned out like this. I'm not sure what happened. I'll put it below so you guys can look at it. Maybe you'll have some ideas.